RIOTS IN BELGIUM.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 4636, 15 April 1902, Page 5

RIOTS IN BELGIUM.

CABLE NEWS.

CKITED PRESS ASSOCIATION. —BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. COPYRIGHT.

OUTBREAK OF SOCIALISTS. CONFLICT BETWEEN WORKERS AND SOLDIERS. BRUSSELS, April 13. Four thousand strikers, near Charleroi. awaited a train bringing Flemish workers from the mines. Mounted troops cleared tho street, and occupied the station to protect tho Flemish. A riot followed, during which volleys were exchanged between the troops and tho strikers, a girl being killed and many others wounded. A general strike of miners in the Charleroi district has been ordered to begin on Monday. Gendarmes frequently charged mobs in the Brussels streets on Saturday, using their swords and bayonets. Several persons were killed. SERIOUS STREET FIGHTING. UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE DEMANDED. (Received April 15; 0.32 a.m.) BRUSSELS, April 14. The situation is very serious, though the Government is confident that it will bo able to quell tho disturbances. After tho open rupture in the Chamber of Deputies between the Clerical and Socialist Deputies, Van do Nevelde, tho chief Socialist leader, was arrested by order of the Government, but was subsequently released. His followers wero greatly incensed. The street fighting in Brussels during the evening was severe. Tho mobs used revolvers, iron bolts and glass bombs filled with corrosives. The gendarmes used swords and rifles. At least three were killed and a hundred wounded.

A ghastly struggle took placo for the body of a fatally wounded man, whose clothes wero stripped off before the gendarmes wero successful in their efforts to secure him. Later rioters made a determined, but fruitless, effort to secure the corpses of two rioters from St. Pierre Hospital, their object being to exhibit the bodies in order to inflame the populace. Troops threatened to fire on anyone opening windows in the city. Women were wounded during the disturbances. Rioting also occurred at Liege and La Lonviers.

Twenty thousand Socialists and three thousand Liberals quietly demonstrated at Charleroi on Sunday in favour of universal suffrage. The Socialist leaders have published a violent appeal to the people to take universal suffrage by storm if Parliament denies it. . * King Leopold is at Ostend.